A Moment of Clarity, However Slow and Temporary

OK, before I start this post, one rule: if you go out drinking, leave your camera at home. No matter what you might think, the insides of bars are not all that cool, people are not really that photogenic when drunk, and the next morning you'll fret your brains out trying to remember just where the hell you dropped that camera before collapsing in your bed.

Now, on with the stuff that matters.

Longing on a large scale is what makes history. This is just a kid with a local yearning but he is part of an assembling crowd, anonymous thousands off the busses and the trains, people in narrow columns tramping over the swing bridge above the river, and even if they are not a migration or a revolution, some vast shaking of the soul, they bring with them the body heat of a great city and their own small reveries and desperations, the unseen something that haunts the day - men in fedoras and sailors on shore leave, the stray tumble of their thoughts, going to a game.

-Don DeLillo, Underworld

Yesterday, I went to a baseball game. I find I think a lot at baseball games. About everything. Yesterday I planned for the trip I'll be taking in a week, mapped out the four or five things I want to have implemented on this site, reminisced about an old friend (with whom I have attended what seems like countless baseball games). I don't know what it is - probably in part my erratic attention span, combined with the the timelessness of the game, which can sometimes slow time itself to the lolling speed of molasses oozing - but I find there are a lot of gaps to be filled in with your typical baseball experience, and usually I find it pretty easy to do so. I might almost want to say I see it as a place of inspiration, but I'm not necessarily ready to go that far. Not at this point.

Also, something else about yesterday. Yesterday seemed to be a Guided by Voices day. First, into work with me I brought a mix CD of Guided by Voices, which Jeremy gave me for my birthday. Something like thirty-one songs from almost all of the band's releases for the past thirteen years, all on a single CD. Rock. Second, Pitchfork had a little news item on future Bob Pollard/Tobin Sprout releases. This should be cool. Tobin Sprout wrote some of the best Guided by Voices songs before he split the band in (what?) 1996.

Oh, and also: Gold Star for Robot Boy. (Horrible joke. I know!)

But one last thing about baseball before I finish here. The diversity of people, the chaos, watching the way families and friends huddle in groups and boyfriends cling to girlfriends, and people fall asleep and leave early and get grumpy or enthusiastic or totally drunk is just so heartfeldt, unceremonious and real. I love it. And always there is the youthful sense of awe, which is still nice to experience, if only vicariously.

OK, Finished

Right now, because I know you care, I'm listening to Red House Painters. These are the sad songs we sing to ourselves.